“Innovation and its Discontents” by Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner

There is much ammunition in this book for what I already suspected.
There is a good deal of theory and practice of patents.
Many famous patent disputes are explained here more cogently than the contemporaneous press reports.
The book suggests that patents provide a viable business model for drug research.
Clearly sometimes patents do encourage innovation.
The hardest part is generally not the invention but the commercialization of the invention.

Some pro-patent points he has missed so far:

The ‘teachings’ part of patent law produces some good technology documentation, even if it is in an obscure language.

Regarding the Rambus vs. Infineon case I thought that there were severe penalties in claiming that the inventor invented something that he did not.
I thought the penalty was much more than merely voiding the patent.
I have no nexus on patents so I note here an interesting paper by James Bessen and Eric Maskin: Sequential Innovation, Patents, and ImitationOn that paper I note:
Regarding licensing patents for further innovation.
Is the decision to invest in further innovation made before or after the license agreement?
There are problems either way.
A low transaction cost license mechanism would help, but I don’t know any.
Perhaps most of the cost of innovation is not in having the innovative idea, but in proving its efficacy.
This does not much change the dilemma however.